A FEW WORDS ON YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

It’s easy to compare You Were Never Really Here to Taxi Driver. It does make sense. Besides the fact that both films deal with characters saving young girls from prostitution/sex-trafficking, there are some strong visual similarities between the two films...

Taxi Driver / You Were Never Really Here

My good friend/podcast partner Scott Thorough put it perfectly in a recent tweet... 

Lynne Ramsay's latest also shares some of the same DNA as Drive which also comes from the school of Scorsese (the plots to Drive & You Were Never Really Here are similar in that both protagonist use hammers as weapons and they also get caught up in convoluted crimes that are way above their pay grade). 

Drive / You Were Never Really Here

The emphasis on the hammer (along with one scene in particular) also brings Oldboy & Pulp Fiction to mind...

Oldboy / You Were Never Really Here

Pulp Fiction / You Were Never Really Here

If the Taxi Driver/Drive comparison doesn’t do it for you - imagine a gritty episode of Law & Order: SVU where Elliot Stabler's PTSD takes control over him and he goes batshit crazy killing pedophiles with a hammer. 

And before some of you get bent out of shape over some of these comparison (which are valid) Lynne Ramsay’s cinematic universe is full of references that she herself has acknowledged. From using the theme from Terrence Malick’s Badlands in Ratcatcher to her recreation of “The Lovers” at the beginning of the same film - she is an influenced filmmaker (an influenced filmmaker that has a style all her own). 

"The Lovers" / Ratcatcher

A few more visual similarities between older cinema and You Were Never Really Here...

Battleship Potemkin /
You Were Never Really Here

Apocalypse Now / You Were Never Really Here

The Night Of The Hunter / You Were Never Really Here

Now...the trailer for You Were Never Really Here is a bit deceiving. It’s certainly brutal and somewhat grimey but a lot of the brutality & griminess is either implied or takes place just off camera. This is common for Lynne Ramsay. In her sophomore feature; Morvern Callar, we see the aftermath of a suicide instead of the suicide itself (we also see the dismemberment of the dead body just off camera). In Ratcatcher she shows us Ryan Quinn’s dead body right after he drowns rather than seeing the actual drowning itself. In the very beginning of You Were Never Really Here, you see Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joe” cleaning off a bloody hammer that he clearly used to kill someone minutes before. The cinema of Lynne Ramsay’s rests on the idea of hints & implications. 

You Were Never Really Here isn’t as violent as one might expect and it is, my personal opinion, that it has to do with the female direction. And that’s not a criticism. Quite the opposite. Movies with action & violence are often relegated to male directors because film directing is kind of a boys club and we all know boys love their action & violence. I don’t mean to make this about gender but I think there’s a tenderness that some male directors just don’t have. You don’t always have to be tender when directing a film but in the case of this specific film I think you do. Our main character Joe is suffering from multiple forms of PTSD. Through quick flashbacks we’re given pieces of a rather large puzzle that indicates he was raised by violent/abusive father, was traumatized from his time in the military, and was scarred from his time as an FBI agent that presumably worked in sex crimes. 

In the present day - Joe moonlights as a rescuer of young girls caught up in sex trafficking rinks. On his latest assignment, he gets in way over his head and discovers that the child he is supposed to rescue has ties to local New York City government. 

Instead of making Joe out to be this unbelievably badass tough guy (which he kind of is on some level), he’s a broken man barely holding on. This is that tenderness I was speaking of earlier. I know I’m generalizing but it is true that some men have problems showing certain emotions whereas women don’t. I think that’s why this film is a success because Ramsay adds a personal/touching layer to a film that would have been nothing more than a kickass action film in the hands of some run-of-the mill male filmmaker. That’s not to say male directors aren’t good at mixing violence & tenderness (Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher 2 comes to mind). But it is my personal opinion that women have a better balance/grasp on mixing the two elements (Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day & I Can’t Sleep, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama & Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Evolution are a few more examples of women successfully mixing beauty & violence).

Joe has a soul. Not only does his line of work have to do with saving young girls, but he also takes care of his mother and isn’t afraid to cry when it’s time to cry (it makes perfect sense as to why Phoenix won best actor for his performance at last year's Cannes film festival).

Like I said earlier - the fast-paced hammer wielding trailer might be a little deceiving to some, but if you’re interested in semi-non conventional cinema (the music is strange, the editing is jarring, a couple of hilariously random things occur, and there are long stretches of minimal dialogue) this might just be the film for you. 

It’s always a treat when Lynne Ramsay delivers (in two decades she’s only made four features). Hopefully You Were Never Really Here will be a success making Ramsay more active behind the camera in the near future.

KILLER'S KISS

Not to repeat some of what I already wrote for the pink smoke, but there's nothing worse than a blind/slightly uninformed Stanley Kubrick fan. Don't get me wrong, he's quietly one of my all-time favorite filmmakers but I at least know why that is and I can talk about/praise his work beyond 2001 & A Clockwork Orange (I say "quietly" because at this point, who doesn't consider Stanley Kubrick one of their all-time favorites?? And the minute I say he is one of my favorite filmmakers my insecure side kicks in and I fear I'll get grouped in with a million other mindless cinephiles who praise his movies because they feel they have to).
There's folks out there who feel he's never made a bad film which is a clear indication to me that they've never actually seen Killer's Kiss or sat through Barry Lyndon in its entirety.
I guess Barry Lyndon isn't completely bad. It's just painfully boring. But Killer's Kiss is kind of bad (and if it's not bad it's one or two tiers away from bad). But because it's an early film that Kubrick didn't distance himself from (like Fear & Desire), certain folks treat it like it’s the holy grail of early masterworks.
Killer's Kiss was initially met with mixed reviews but almost 60 years later it sits on rotten tomatoes with an 84% fresh rating. Sorry but this is hardly a B-grade film (I have additional issues with this rating when modern noirs like Demonlover & Fear X sit with a 49% & 58%, respectively).
Killer's Kiss is just another noir/love triangle story from the mid-1950's centered around a beautiful woman, a gangster and a boxer (with an incredibly awkward climatic fight scene between our protagonist boxer and antagonistic gangster where they frantically swing axes & mannequin limbs at each other while trying not to fall over).

The fact that people try to defend this film makes me want to dislike it more than I should (I once saw The Killing at IFC with one of the most pretentious repertory crowds who treated it like some kind of gem. I mean seriously, am I missing something?) Stanley Kubrick's “second debut”/sophomore feature always gets a pass with movie fans. He hadn't completely found his footing as a director yet (that's putting it lightly) or The movie really shouldn't count in his filmography when you really think about it (yes it should). It's like when people try to defend Interstellar's lukewarm reception by comparing it to 2001 (no, dude, people didn't even like 2001 at first but they finally came around. The same thing is gonna happen with Interstellar. Just watch.)

And hey, you could very well take a lot of what I'm saying and turn it around on me. Some of my personal favorite films are early works like Eraserhead & Shadows. I know plenty people who consider those films to be sloppy amateurish casualties of a limited budget. But what films like Eraserhead & Shadows lack in craft or budget, they make up for in subject matter (Shadows) or the fact that there was an honest attempt at tackling a serious subject, like man’s fear of fatherhood in Eraserhead, in a somewhat abstract way. Killer's Kiss is no different from the hundred other old timey noirs that play on AMC on a random Sunday afternoon.

Killer's Kiss / Maniac

This mild bashing of Kubrick's sophomore feature might seem a little random but in the last few years I've heard & read too many variations of the same complaints about how Eyes Wide Shut ruined Stanley's previously perfect filmography. That's hardly the case. Eyes Wide Shut certainly has its problems but at the same time I'd watch Eyes Wide Shut on a 24-hour loop over another screening of The Killing (I've also been sitting on a review of Renoir's Rules Of The Game for over four years with the hopes that John & Chris will do another installment of Old Movies Suck at the pink smoke. So until that happens I have to fire shots at another "old" film that gets a lot of undeserved praise).
My gripe with people's acceptance of Killer's Kiss isn't that much different from Monte Hellman's Road To Nowhere - another subpar movie that gets a pass because it's directed by a legendary veteran filmmaker (read my rant concerning Hellman's Road To Nowhere and the momentary back-and-forth it brought on between myself and the film's producer).

To be fair, Killer's Kiss did plant the seeds for what eventually became The Killing (another crime noir centered around dames, gangsters & sports) and it did inspire some imagery in recent films that I do kind of enjoy, so I can't completely dismiss it. Only in the last decade or so has The Killing been put on the same pedestal as some of Kubrick's other 2nd tier classics like Paths Of Glory.

Imagine if Stanley Kubrick revisited the noir genre after finding his signature style of bold colors, polarizing hallway shots and cryptic stares. All that time & energy spent on Barry Lyndon & the second half of Full Metal Jacket could have been used on a super cool stylized crime flick (admit it, a lot of you zone out, lose interest and start surfing the internet after Vincent D'Onofrio's "Private Pile" makes his exit in Full Metal Jacket).
I guess we have to take Nicolas Winding Refn's movies as conciliation...

TWO BY JOHN CARPENTER: MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN & GHOSTS OF MARS

I'm not familiar with John Carpenter's later critically panned movies so I made it a point to only go and see stuff like Escape From LA, Memoirs Of An Invisible Man & Ghosts Of Mars at the John Carpenter retrospective that took place at BAM last month.

While there isn't much to say about Escape From LA (it's just as terrible and Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez-stenched as I remembered it) I felt Memoirs & Ghosts were worthy of some kind of analysis...

MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN

I’m always down to dissect/revisit the critical failures/potential misunderstood works of a masterful filmmaker, and Memoirs Of An Invisible Man definitely fits the bill. Anyone who follows this site regularly knows I’m a major defender of everyone from post-Collateral Michael Mann (read my recent review of Blackhat) to Andrea Arnold (I was actually able to find a few good things in her overall grueling Wuthering Heights adaptation), so I know what it’s like to love films & filmmakers that are underappreciated by the rest of the world. But at the same time, if I feel something is bad I’ll call it what it is. Liking bad things ironically has become a major problem within movie & music criticism (just read half the music reviews on pitchfork media that pertain to rap music if you want further examples of this). Cinephiles sometimes like to praise films they know damn well aren’t good just to be different. I’m guilty of it myself from time to time. We’re selfish folks who like to have certain movies all to ourselves so we make prolific statements about how (some) dumb movies are really misunderstood when they really aren't. Sometimes it gets out of hand. There’s a nice chunk of movies out there that hide behind the “cult movie” label when in fact they’re just bad.

This screening of Memoirs couldn’t have come at a better time. Pink Smoker Chris Funderberg has mentioned it on multiple occasions in his writings (specifically Sam Neil’s underrated performance), which made me wanna revisit it (the last time I saw Memoirs was in the early 90’s when my Dad videotaped it off of HBO). After seeing Memoirs again recently I can co-sign that Sam Neil’s role as the villainous David Jenkins is one of the film’s only saving graces. But there are a few other overlooked qualities. 

I don’t know if people realize how smart the casting of Chevy Chase was. From the beginning of his career he was known for his physical comedy (…or just falling down a lot). The character of Nick Halloway (the invisible protagonist) involves a lot of tripping, bumping in to people and falling over. Who better to cast for a role like that (at the time) than Chevy Chase?? Plus Halloway was kind of a jerk. Portraying a jerk should come easy to a guy like Chevy Chase given his reputation behind the scenes.

My only beef here is the pairing of Chevy Chase & Daryl Hannah. Hannah isn’t exactly my cup of tea in terms of beauty, but that doesn’t mean I think she’s unattractive. I get that she represent the standard statuesque blonde haired beauty that a lot of men appreciate. So what is she doing being paired with a dud like Chevy Chase? And while we’re at it, what was Daryl Hannah doing being paired with half of her (unworthy) on-screen love interests like Dudley Moore (Crazy People), Steve Martin (Roxanne) or Kevin O’Connor (Steel Magnolias)??
But that’s just superficial nitpicking on my part. The chemistry between Chase & Hannah was jut fine.

I’m not sure if John Carpenter was making a light parody of late 50’s/early 60’s-style campy noir films, or if he expected us to take this 100% seriously (outside of the genuinely comedic moments). And it’s not like the tone/ambiance of Memoirs Of An Invisible Man was new territory for Carpenter (like so many critics said it was). Between the special effects & the delivery of dialogue, Memoirs falls right in line with They Live, Prince Of Darkness and even Big Trouble In Little China. Memoirs is also just as much a body horror/science fiction adventure as They Live or The Thing. I guess some folks failed to realize that body horror branches off to things beyond just exploding body parts and scenes of gore (which are common elements in Carpenter’s cinema). The movie is about a guy whose body is literally altered after a freak accident (and for the rest of the film he tries to find a cure all while evading a secret government agency that wants to use him as a spy). Carpenter even goes so far as to show us Halloway’s internal organs every time he eats, drinks or smokes something. Sounds like it fits in with the rest of his filmography to me. This is like when David Cronenberg made M Butterfly. Sure, there aren’t any exploding heads (Scanners) or scenes of things coming out or going in to people’s stomachs (The Brood & Videodrome), but M Butterfly, a film about a person disguising himself as a woman, is just as much of a “body modification” film as anything else he’s done. Memoirs also reminded me of Raimi’s Darkman and Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man…

Darkman / Memoirs Of An Invisible Man / Hollow Man

But still...NONE of this gives Memoirs Of An Invisible Man any kind of a free pass. This was an unsuccessful effort at the end of the day. The tone is incredibly confusing (like I already said, I'm not sure if this a true comedy or not). There's a whole middle section that takes place at a beach house that could have been edited down. The original director (Ivan Reitman) stepped away from the project after butting heads with Chevy Chase (something I’m not too surprised by). According to a few sources Chevy Chase was heavily involved behind the scenes because he wanted Memoirs to slowly transition him in to more serious roles. John Carpenter didn’t even put his name on the title like he usually does (he also didn’t score the film which is another staple of his). This was doomed right out off the gate (like the next film we'll be getting in to momentarily). The special effects are probably the only other good thing about this movie.

But this is the kind of unsuccessful movie that’s worthy of revisiting during something like a retrospective. It definitely doesn’t deserve a 20-something percent rating on rotten tomatoes. But at the same time, complaining about this film’s current ranking is like complaining about getting an F on a test when you felt you deserved a D+ because you showed all your work in the answer section. 

GHOSTS OF MARS

Ghosts Of Mars came out at a time when there were just way too many movies set on mars that it became difficult to differentiate one film from the next (Mission To Mars, The Red Planet, Ghosts Of Mars, Stranded, etc). It also came out during a time when Carpenter wasn't riding a major wave of success. 

This project never stood a chance. 

I’ll be the first to admit that even I dismissed Ghosts of Mars upon its initial release. But now that time has passed and my tastes have changed, I can honestly say that it’s not as bad as critics made it out to be. I think it was unfairly judged and compared to iconic movies like Alien when in fact it should have been put up against other movies in the John Carpenter universe. Not only was Ghost Of Mars originally supposed to be the third film in the Snake Plissken series (“Escape From Mars”) but it definitely takes place in the same universe as Escape From NY & Escape From L.A. 
In terms of plot, Ghosts Of Mars is like a mixture of The Thing with a pinch of Escape From NY/LA (Ice Cube’s “Desolation Williams” is just a slight revamp of Snake Plissken). The story involves a team of space police hired to retrieve & transfer a dangerous prisoner (Desolation Williams) currently being held in a cell on an isolated mining town on Mars. Once they arrive they soon come to find that a strange airborne virus has been let loose on the town turning the inhabitants in to possessed zombie-like demon vampires (???). This mysterious "virus", that transfers from one body to the next once the carrier dies, is similar to the virus in Carpenter’s The Thing (the outcome is obviously different but the idea of a shapeless thing/spirit taking over a human body is similar).
After some initial friction, the police, headed up by Natasha Henstridge & Jason Statham, work alongside Desolation Williams and his team of criminals to fight off the possessed space zombies in an effort to get outta dodge.

I guess the Alien comparison almost makes sense on some level. Both Alien & Ghosts Of Mars are science-fiction/horror hybrids with female protagonists that have to fight their way off of a dangerous planet (there’s even notable scenes in both movies where our female leads are shown in their underwear for no real reason). I actually never paid attention to how attractive Natasha Henstridge was/is until I watched Ghosts Of Mars on the big screen.

Beyond that, the comparison stops there. 

By 2001 I feel like critics should have known what to expect from John Carpenter. This wasn’t supposed to be some cinematic piece of art (even though there are some folks who think so). Ghost Of Mars has a strange reputation in that there are people who hate it, people who love it (in an un-ironic way), and people who find enjoyment from it in the same way a smart kid or a bully finds entertainment in laughing at a “slow kid” (which was definitely the audience I saw it with). Personally, I’m stuck between the last two groups. As you can see there are things I legitimately enjoy about this movie. I give it a solid 2.5 out of 5, but it’s not without its faults. The set design is a little cheesy & overly manufactured and Ice Cube's acting leaves a lot to be desired. The main antagonist/alpha-male zombie ghost (pictured at the top of this review) served no purpose other than to look cool (he was pretty stupid & non threatening). Clea Duvall was not a convincing cop and I can’t help but nitpick at how easily Cube, Henstridge & crew got away the first time (they drove a small rickety truck through a gauntlet of powerful blood thirsty zombies without being stopped or tipped over?)
But if you get too caught up in things like that you’ll never enjoy anything and Ghost Of Mars has more good qualities than bad qualities (barely). In my opinion, this was some of Carpenter’s best original music (along with the help of Anthrax & Buckethead). I don’t know if Ice Cube’s presence was a subconscious influence, but Carpenter’s use of a drum machine with 4 bar patterns & sequences (a standard in hip-hop music) was really great.

I try to keep my cynicism about this movie at a minimum because like I already said, liking things in an ironic way is a huge pet peeve of mine and Ghosts Of Mars is a prime example of how people can get caught up in that. I saw this at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music in a semi-crowded theater full of hipsters who would laugh or cheer at the screen in a way that made me question if they were genuinely enjoying the movie or if they were just laughing at it (I know that in 2015 the term hipster is one of the most overused & misconstrued labels, but irony mixed with cynicism mixed with sarcasm is an element of hipsterism and that was definitely the vibe I got from the BAM crowd I saw Ghosts with).

I also don’t know if folks were ready for an aggressive Black Male/Beautiful Blonde Femlae co-lead. I think we all know these are two prototypes that don’t usually survive in movies like Ghosts Of Mars yet to everyone’s surprise, they lived til the end!
But at the same time, I'd like to call bullshit on there being no sexual tension between the two leads (the sexual tension in the film is between Henstridge & co-star Statham). Had the male lead been portrayed by Kurt Russell (or just someone not Black) there would have probably been some immediate sexual tension between the two leads. But since we're dealing with Ice Cube, Carpenter made the two protagonists to be more like buddies. Even in 2015, folks like The Rock & Will Smith are two of the only dark skinned actors allowed to have sexual tension with attractive white women. Why was Vin Diesel (who is a person of color contrary to the characters he plays) given a sexy female co-star in xXx (Asia Argento), while Ice Cube got no one when he took over the sequel? What? Ice Cube can't pull attractive women? From his time in NWA alone you think he wasn't slaying groupies who looked just as good as (or better than) Natasha Henstridge? Let's be real.
So on one hand I commend John Carpenter for going against the grain by using unconventional leads, but I feel like he could have really gone against the grain even more by adding some romance. Of the four Carpenter films I watched at the BAM retrospective, Ice Cube was the only lead actor that had no sex or sexual tension with their female co-star.

Anyway...at the end of the day I don’t think this is a masterpiece, but I had such a fun time watching it that I ordered the DVD off of Amazon, so that says something.

MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERPIECE: DEEP COVER

Like Judgment Night, Deep Cover is another early 90’s film that’s known more for the music than the actual movie (for those that don’t remember, the Deep Cover Soundtrack gave Snoop Dog & Death Row records a push before The Chronic album). I find this upsetting because Deep Cover is actually quite good and it doesn't belong in the same universe as Judgment Night. I think we all know the 90’s brought us an abundance of violent/hood/drug-related films that were both good & bad (New Jack City, Juice, South Central, Boyz N Tha Hood, King Of New York, Strapped, Menace To Society, etc). It got to the point where any American movie with a hip-hop soundtrack that involved Black people, guns, violence & the police got thrown in to the same generic category. Because of this, stuff like like Deep Cover, The Glass Shield & Clockers got unfairly placed in to the “hood/gangster” genre. I won’t deny that there are similarities between some of these films. Parts of King Of New York rubbed off on Deep Cover in terms of style, a lot of these movies share some of the same actors, the basic plot of Strapped is damn near identical to Deep Cover, and in all honesty, Deep Cover is almost like an unofficial sequel to New Jack City. While NJC was obviously more of a commercial success, I have to give the artistic edge to Deep Cover because the latter film makes you want to stay away from drugs all together. There isn’t a character like Nino Brown (NJC) that people look up to or find charming (I know it wasn’t Mario Van Peeple’s intention to make Nino Brown out to be a slightly likable character, but Wesley Snipes turned him in to a charismatic figure that people still quote today).

Bill Duke's directorial work focuses primarily on people of color (Dark Girls, A Rage In Harlem, A Prince Among Slaves, Hoodlum, etc). Actually, I've always wondered why he, along with Carl Franklin, Charles Burnett & Wendall B. Harris, weren't included on that famous New York Times cover highlighting Black filmmakers in the early 90's. While Duke's films are enjoyed by folks of all races, I have a hard time believing the average non-black movie goer can truly appreciate something like Dark Girls. And if I'm wrong then why wasn't it given any kind of a substantial theatrical release?
Deep Cover might be Bill Duke’s one truly universally accessible film in that it features more recognizable faces like Jeff Goldblum (in one of his greatest performances) and a post-Boyz N Tha Hood Laurence Fishburne (this was right around the time when he went from being billed as “Larry Fishburne” to “Laurence Fishburne”).

Clarence Williams in Tales From The Hood

Let’s also not forget the superb supporting cast. Besides Goldblum, Deep Cover features two more of modern cinema’s unique figures in the form of Clearance Williams III & Roger Guenveur Smith. Clearance Williams’ reputation as a quirky loose cannon goes without saying but if you need some examples, just watch him in Tales From The Hood, Half Baked & Sugar Hill. It’s a shame that he wasn’t used as a villain more in his prime (in Deep Cover he plays a police officer who kind of represents the protagonist’s conscience). Honestly, couldn’t you picture Clarence Williams as a psychotic villain in a early 90’s Steven Segal movie? I certainly could.
Some of you may not consider Roger Guenveur Smith to be as intense or edgy as I do, but just watch his performances in He Got Game or the final act of Eve’s Bayou and get back to me.

And I’m sorry but this guy’s presence, as the rival drug dealer “Ivy”, was criminally underrated. No other grown man could ever use the term “sissy” when addressing another man and actually make it work as an insult…

The character of Ivy is the type of lower-mid tier villain that could have easily been removed from Deep Cover, wordrobe & all, and placed in Robocop or a vintage Van Damme movie.

I feel like the only person missing from Deep Cover was the racially ambiguous post-Anthony Quinn/pre-Victor Argo Henry Silva. He could have easily played the role of “Barbosa” (not to take anything away from Gregory Sierra because he did a fine job). Silva had an edgy acting style that would have fit in perfectly with the rest of the Deep Cover cast (he would later go on to make up for this missed opportunity by playing the main crime boss in Ghost Dog).

Henry Silva

Ever since I was a boy I always sensed that something was a little “off” about the performances in Deep Cover. And when I say “off” I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’s not like the performances were bad. They were just…strange. Lines of dialogue were delivered with these weird inflections when it wasn’t really called for, some moments were beyond random (Roger Guenveur Smith’s “Eddie” frantically eating a popsicle while high off his ass) and the overall moodiness of the film felt like a light Miles Davis acid trip (see the African mask scene for an example of this). However some of the dialogue is pretty thought provoking & sharp:

Gerald Carver (Charles Martin Smith): Do you know the difference between a Black Man and a nigger?

Russell Stevens (Laurence Fishburne): The nigger is the one that would even answer that question.

(This was always one of my personal favorite exchanges from any movie. I’ve never been quite sure if Fishburne actually answered the question, thus making him a “nigger”, or if he side-stepped it and eloquently put Smith in his place)

Now that I’m older I’m of the theory that, because Deep Cover is partially about drugs, all the cast members in this movie were acting under the influence of some type of drug in an effort to really tap in to the movie. Naturally this would add an additional layer to Deep Cover in that the movie is already about a cop who assimilates into the role of a drug dealer and starts to play the part a little too well.
And I’m not talking about hard drugs like heroine or crack. I just think Fishburne, Goldblum, Williams and the rest of the cast were taking hits of laced marijuana in between takes. Drug use is a crapshoot when making cinema. Some of Martin Scorsese’s best work was done under the influence of cocaine while some of Richard Pryor’s worst performances, which all took place at the end of his career, were because of drugs.
But the final outcome with Deep Cover and it's alleged drug use (which is a crazy theory only I believe in) was a success in my opinion.

In the film, Laurence Fishburne plays “Russell Stevens” – a police officer recruited by the CIA to go undercover in an effort to help take down a Los Angeles drug trafficking operation (the CIA’s recruitment of Stevens in Deep Cover is similar to that of The Silence Of The Lambs when Clarice Starling is used by the CIA to help capture Buffalo Bill). As the title suggests, Stevens (who now goes under the alias: “John Hull”) gets in way too deep. While undercover he becomes romantically involved with one of the lower-level traffickers he’s supposed to be taking down and forms a strange bond/partnership with another trafficker in the form of “David Jason” (Jeff Goldblum). Even worse, Russell gets hooked on drugs which hits way too close to home for him (at the beginning of the movie we learn that Russell’s father was an addict and because of this, he vowed to never use drugs).

If you happen to watch Deep Cover after reading this, please note Jeff Goldblum’s slow transition from a crooked suburban defense attorney to a wannabe drug kingpin (if you still have a VCR, I highly suggest watching the VHS to retain all the grittiness). Fishburne’s transition from a straight-laced cop to a drug addicted undercover agent is also underrated (by the middle of the movie you start to forget he’s a cop). I’d also like to know if I’m the only person who thinks the acting in the final climax is absolutely batshit crazy for a conventional/studio film. Again, I mean that in a good way in the same way I think elements of Only God Forgives are equally batshit crazy. Deep Cover is a unique beast that stands out from all the other movies in the same genre. Instead of pointing the finger at addicts and low level drug dealers, Bill Duke shines a light on everyone from the CIA to the upper class drug dealers in the suburbs who are just as much a part of the drug machine as the dealers on the corner.

As much as I love rap music, I have to admit that it’s given some good films some bad reputations OR, it’s put some average/overrated movies on an undeserved pedestal (Scarface). I sometimes wonder if folks actually know characters like Tony Montana & Nino Brown aren’t good people and shouldn’t be idolized. We all know besides mafia folks like John Gotti and whatnot, Montana & Brown are two of the most referenced figures in modern rap lyrics when it comes to money & violence. I sometimes struggle with these movies myself because I get all caught up in how they make black people look. Some of these “urban” movies are pretty stupid but they have one or two really great qualities that trump the bad qualities. Take King Of New York. The older I get the more I kind of dislike Abel Ferrara’s cult classic. I started watching this last year to prep for the Cinema Of Abel Ferrara and I began to wonder if I was too old for this. But Laurence Fishburne’s performance kept my attention (*SPOILER ALERT* is it any coincidence that once his character is killed off, the movie starts to drag to an anti-climactic finale?) From Deep Cover’s promotional advertisements to its association with Death Row Records (one of the pinnacles of “Gangster Rap”) I can see how people unfamiliar with Bill Duke’s filmography would assume Deep Cover was just another run of the mill crime film, but I assure you that’s not the case and is worthy of a second chance/rediscovery.

GONE GIRL

I did a recent movie shelf entry on Gone Girl for the pink smoke. Below is a much shorter/slightly different PINNLAND EMPIRE version.

enjoy...

Gone Girl really had no business being as good as it turned out to be. The story/source material behind it (which I finished reading a few weeks ago) is also pretty ridiculous but it’s still entertaining. Even if some of you dislike this movie, which is understandable, you’ll certainly laugh, gasp or express some type of genuine (non-dismissive) emotion while watching it. On some level that’s a success in my book. In the same way that Only God Forgives was a mixture of trashy late night action movies combined with “artsy” filmmaking, Gone Girl is like a mixture of those trashy late night erotic thrillers combined with certain elements of a surprisingly enjoyable Lifetime movie. You remember those really bad skin flicks that used to come on Showtime & Cinemax at night during the late 80’s through the mid 90’s that featured folks like Shannon Tweed, Angie Everhart, Jeff Fahey and/or C. Thomas Howell? That’s essentially what Gone Girl is except this time around the movie had a pretty good director behind it (David Fincher) instead of some nameless hack.

Fincher is a good director but he’s still part of that group of modern filmmakers (Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, etc) that people give way too much credit to. I’m certainly a fan of The Game (which Gone Girl is closest too in terms of “look” & execution) and I guess I like Se7en, but other than that, I’ve never been super impressed with his work like everyone else (don’t get me started on Fight Club and how overrated it is). I say all this to say my praise of Gone Girl isn't coming from some sudden fly-by-night Criterion/Lincoln Center David Fincher fan. I'm someone who actually stops and questions his work beyond just Benjamin Button (seriously tho - is it me or did David Fincher suddenly become this super serious "auteur" around the time of Benjamin Button, in the same way Guillermo Del Torro was suddenly deemed this important voice in modern film?)

The best way to enjoy Gone Girl is to look at it like a new-age, slightly more serious War Of The Roses. Although It is getting a good amount of praise from everyone, there’s still a nice handful of folks that are giving Gone Girl WAY too much credit and taking it a little too seriously like it’s some prolific relationship drama. Some are even calling it misoginistic. I partially blame publications like Indiewire & Film Comment who ran recent write-ups on Gone Girl as if it’s in a similar lane as other modern relationship films like Eyes Wide Shut, Blue Valentine or even Take This Waltz. Sure Gone Girl is about a deteriorating marriage, but still – this movie is pure entertainment. Even before you find out what the twist is or who you think the "good guy" is, you should already know early on in the movie that “Nick Dunne” (Ben Affleck) & “Amy Elliot-Dunne” (Rosamund Pike) are essentially caricatures. They both carry realistic traits & stereotypes that come along with their respective genders, but the problem is that they’re made up of almost EVERY stereotype that’s associated with both men & women. Nick is the "dumb" husband that hangs out on the couch playing video games, and has trouble expressing certain emotions. Amy is the judgy, nit-picky, sultry femme fatale yet slightly “broken” & insecure at the same time. Nick & Amy are also both unlikeable & somewhat frustrating human beings, which is what makes the Gone Girl viewing experience so much fun. They both suck. There’s really no “good guy” in this movie. It’s just fun to watch two shitty people essentially torture each other for two and a half hours.

Gone Girl is tough to talk about without giving away too many spoilers, but it’s ultimately a neo-noir/“cat & mouse” story about a man whose wife suddenly goes missing and he eventually becomes the prime suspect. In the middle of everything we learn that things aren’t as they seem and Nick might have been set up. 

Gone Girl did everything that Side Effects tried to do, only better. There’s even a few subconscious shades of To The Wonder in Fincher’s latest film in that Affleck’s performance in both movies are fairly similar and both stories focus on “moody” female characters in the midst of a failed marriage who feel out of place living in the middle of an unfamiliar Midwestern town. 

I will say that one thing the book has over the movie is that the book delves way more in to the upbringing of both Nick & Amy and we see why/how they turned out the way they did. Nick’s parents were dysfunctional in the traditional sense (a mean alcoholic father who had a hard time expressing emotion with a doting wife who secretly hated him) while Amy’s parents were/are quietly dysfunctional in that they messed her up without meaning too or even realizing it (besides being incredibly self-centered, her parents put more effort in to their career than they did in raising Amy). David Fincher tried to implicate these things but I felt it could have been pulled off a little better. 

But at the end of the day, the script, which was written by the book’s author Gillian Flynn, cut out what was necessary (smaller supporting characters, additional scenes & certain "flashbacks") in order to make the story flow a little better as a movie.

Again – you could spend your time calling Gone Girl a misogynistic story if you want. There are scenes that are definitely overly sexualized, like the climactic scene towards the end where we see a half naked woman pretty much rolling around in someone else’s blood (reminiscent of a particular scene in Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day).

Trouble Every Day

And a lot of the women in the film are pretty one-note (the bored gossipy housewife, the dumb childlike mistress, etc), but I honestly didn’t see the male characters painted in any kind of a positive light either. The men in Gone Girl were liars, self centered, creepy or pretty slimy. I don’t see how anyone could be for either “Team Amy” or “Team Nick” (which is how some audiences have divided themselves). Plus Carrie Coon’s performance as Nick's sister and Kim Dickey's role as the lead detective on the case balance out all the simplistic female characters (they're probably the film's only two redeemable people).

*SPOILER ALERT* And yes, by the end of the movie we get the idea that Nick is “trapped” by Amy in to staying together, but let’s also not forget that he’s not some innocent victim here who didn’t do anything to hurt Amy (this is something I think some people have forgotten by the end of the film). Just sayin’… *SPOILER ALERT*

Deborah Kara Unger / Rosamund Pike

Ben Affleck & Rosamund Pike definitely play their parts. Pike, who channels Deborah Kara Unger in her prime, is pretty exceptional in her chameleon-like performance, and I don't know if Ben Affleck has ever been cast in a more fitting role. But it’s the supporting cast (Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon & Kim Dickey) that really made the movie work for me. Tyler Perry is surprisingly tolerable (actually he’s pretty good in this but given my history with Perry you guys know I can’t give him his full due), Dickey pays her respect to both Jodie Foster & Holly Hunter with her performance as the straight 

-laced lead detective investigating Amy’s disappearance, and Neil Patrick Harris is the perfect combination of creepy & funny (although I don’t think we’re supposed to find his performance as comedic as it turned out to be, but it’s Neil Patrick Harris - I don’t think he’ll ever shake the residue that How I Met Your Mother and Harold & Kumar left behind).

I usually don't write about a lot of the “big” movies on here because there’s already a hundred other sites & blogs out there that have given their opinion on this movie, but I was so surprised at how good it turned out that I felt the need to share my thoughts. I’m learning not to prejudge movies so much in 2014. Besides Gone Girl, Chef & Skeleton Twins also turned out to be much better than I thought they’d be. Gone Girl isn’t one of my personal favorites of the year, but it’s a strong candidate for being in the top tier of my honorable mention.

DOUBLE FEATURE: PRINCE AVALANCHE & BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

These two films may not have much in common to you all but to me they share a few connections. Both Prince Avalanche & Berberian Sound Studio represent "the return" of two separate groups of artists who I love/loved very much. With Prince Avalanche, this was a return to form for director David Gordon Green & his cinematographer; Tim Orr, while Bereberian Sound Studio represented Broadcast's return to recording music after the passing of their lead singer. Both films are also about loneliness among men to a certain extent, and lets also not forget these were both released last year and are set in the past...

PRINCE AVALANCHE

Immediately after posting on facebook about how pleased I was with Prince Avalanche, PINNLAND EMPIRE contributor Matt Reddick's girlfriend; Catalina, noted the film's serious bromantic quality which brought me to the realization that David Gordon Green doesn't get enough recognition for his exploration into the world of male bonding. This lack of recognition is partially his fault due to his last two films being quite bad which turned a lot of people off to his work (myself included). But prior to Your Highness & The Sitter almost every film he made dealt with friendships between males of various ages (All The Real Girls, George Washington & Pineapple Express) or the bond between brothers (Undertow). Hell, even Your Highness is about bonding between two brothers when you really think about it.

Prince Avalanche fits right in with the rest of Green's filmography more than anything he's done in quite some time.

No matter how Malick-ian & artsy Green's past work was, he always expressed the desire to want to make a comedy since he first started making movies (refer to his Charlie Rose Interview back in 2000). It's just his previous two comedies were awful. With Prince Avalanche it seems like he's found a balance. On one hand he went back to the beautiful sprawling cinema he was once known for over a decade ago while at the same time still holding on to the comedic elements that he's been exploring for the last six years.
Prince Avalanche feels like a mixture of All The Real Girls and Pineapple Express (Gordon's one & only successful comedy in my opinion). Paul Rudd & Emile Hirsch's chemistry is pretty similar to Rogen & Franco - the grumpy cynic (Rogen/Rudd) constantly fussing at the dopey idiot (Franco/Hirsch) which is a relationship that dates back to the first comedic duos of stage. And certain moments in Prince Avalanche felt like extensions (or deleted moments) from All The Real Girls. There's an exchange of dialogue between Paul Rudd & Emile Hirsch in Prince Avalanche that reminded of a quote Shea Whigham delivers to Paul Schnieder in All The Real Girls...

Lance (Emile Hirsch): At least I don't go around thinking I'm a great dancer when I actually stink at dancing

Alvin (Paul Rudd): You've never even seen me dance

Lance: I've seen you do a lot of things when you don't think I'm looking

 - Prince Avalanche

Tip (Shea Whigham): No, we ain't friends no more! ...YOU AIN'T EVEN IN MY TOP 10! 

-All The Real Girls

You have to remember that both scenes I just quoted involve grown men. There's something incredibly funny, sad & intriguing about that. Its like David Gordon Green knows there's this level of immaturity that men will never lose no matter how much we age.
When I watch how grown men interact with one another in Green's work I'm sometimes reminded of John Cassavetes, Peter Falk & Ben Gazzara in Husbands...

BRO-ING OUT: MALE BONDING IN THE CINEMA OF DAVID GORDON GREEN...

George Washington (2000)

Undertow (2004)

Pineapple Express (2009)

Prince Avalanche (2013)

I have to give Green credit for crafting a solid film centered around two traditionally frustrating cinematic archetypes: "the idiot" (Emile Hirsch) and "the unpleasant cynic" (Paul Rudd). But in the case of Prince Avalanche, Green twists the screws a little bit and makes Hirsch's idiot character ("Lance") not only stupid but also without much of a conscience (at one point in the film he openly brags about sleeping with his best friend's girlfriend without fully realizing how fucked that is). And Paul Rudd's "Alvin" is one of those unpleasant people who only knows how to communicate through negativity and is just someone you don't want to be around for more than 20 minutes (he's easily agitated for no good reason, prefers to be depressed & lonely and he almost never smiles). And with the exception of two other supporting characters who show up sparingly, Alvin & Lance are all we have to deal with for pretty much the entire film.

Set in the late 80's, Prince Avalanche (a loose remake of the 2011 Icelandic film; Either Way) is the story of Alvin (Rudd) & Lance (Hirsch) - two road workers at odds with each other doing repair to a highway that's been severely damaged by a massive flash fire. Their job, which pretty much consists of painting the yellow divider lines in the middle of a long stretch of highway, forces Alvin & Lance to be away from home for days at a time. Alvin is currently going through a rough break up with his ex, who just so happens to be Lance's sister. As I already said, Alvin is a pretty unhappy guy with no friends who isolates himself from the world (we get the sense he's always been a pretty negative person which is what led to his break up) while Lance is a dopey guy in his early 20's more concerned with women and dreams of leaving his small town for "the big city". As the story progresses, tension in each of their separate personal lives comes to a head along with their relationship with each other. Do they work things out and become buddies or not?
In my opinion, David Gordon Green does Either Way justice with his remake. He maintains the same sparse ambiance and uses the same type of awkward adult humor. Hirsch & Rudd even deliver some of the same dialogue from Either Way line for line a couple of times.
I don't know if I'd label this a dark comedy like so many others have been so quick to do. While Prince Avalanche has plenty of funny moments, there's also just as many serious and/or touching moments that balance everything out making this David Gordon Green's first true dramedy (there's a difference between the two genres). Paul Rudd has worked outside of comedy in the past but this is probably the best non outright comedic performance he's ever given (he really channeled his performance from the 2007 dramedy; Diggers).

Visually, Prince Avalanche is the best looking thing Tim Orr has shot for Green since All The Real Girls. Once again, Orr makes rural/nowhere U.S.A. look nice & calm. There's also a couple of editing moments that are very reminiscent of recent Terrence Malick (specifically The New World & To The Wonder) which was ultimately what showed me that Green had returned to his old style while at the same time still growing and trying out new things as a filmmaker (for those who only started following his post-Pineapple Express work, Green was very much influenced by Malick in the first half of his career)

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

Not since Judgement Night (1993) had I been more initially excited about an original soundtrack more than the actual film the soundtrack was intended for. Ever since the untimely passing of Broadcast's lead singer Trish Keenan, I wondered if one of my all time favorite bands would call it quits. Even though they've experimented with instrumental music in the past (Microtronics 1& 2) it was Keenan's voice that really made them so great. But the score they put together for Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio is proof that the remaining members can still make great music even without Keenan's presence (I sincerely hope they don't ever try to find a new lead vocalist because it just wouldn't be the same).

If you refer to my review of 12 Years A Slave you'll recall my growing annoyance with those Hans Zimmer/Howard Shore-style film scores. If I see a slave being brutally beaten on screen (like Chewital Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave) I don't need the heavy handed string music blasted directly in to my ear to remind me that I should feel sad. I know how and what to feel without the added music. Thankfully quite a few filmmakers in 2013 turned to contemporary musicians for more ambient/non-traditional music than any recent year I can think. The Place Beyond The Pines (Mike Patton), Only God Forgives (Cliff Martinez), Berberian Sound Studios (Broadcast), etc. and even though Shane Caruth isn't on the same level as the aforementioned musicians, his work on Upstream Color was great too. Its not like this is some new phenomena. Almost all of Jim Jarmusch's films are scored by contemporary musicians (Tom Waits, John Lurie, Rza & Neil Young), Claire Denis practically works exclusively with various combinations of The Tindersticks lineup and Olivier Assayas has used Sonic Youth a couple of times. But 2013 seemed to be a mini-explosion of contemporary musicians scoring films.

Broadcast's sound is perfect for cinema. They often incorporate visuals in to their live performances and their retro sound is reminiscent of old 60's films like Blow-up which, coincidentally, is a film that had an obvious influence on Berberian Sound Studio.

I know it seems strange that I spent a good portion of 2013 listening to a film score without seeing the film but I was so disappointed by a lot of what I saw last year that I thought Berberian Sound Studio would be just another letdown. The reason I finally got around to watching it is because it landed on a few "best of..." lists in the contributors section of my end of the year wrap-up and its been compared to classic works like The Conversation & Blowout..
After finally watching this (courtesy of Netflix Instant) it makes sense that Berberian Sound Studio is being compared too and group in with The Conversation & Blowout by just about every movie critic out there. All three films are neo-noirs/mysteries about sound engineers in situations that get way out of hand. But to me, Berberian Sound Studio also feels like a mixture of Barton Fink & Roman Coppola's underrated CQ. If you're familiar with either of those films then you know that they're also heavily influenced works. With Barton Fink you have the obvious Eraserhead influence, while CQ is an homage to everything from Roger Corman B-movies & Italian horror films (like in Berberian Sound Studio) to European art house. Like Black Dynamite or Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive & Only God Forgives, Berberian Sound Studio is another retro "movie mixtapes"/movie collage, although slightly less obvious with the movie references...

Berberian Sound Studio / Barton Fink

In Berberian Sound Studios, Toby Jones plays "Gilderoy" - a British sound engineer hired to work on the post-production of a low budget Italian giallo film ("The Equestrian Vortex") in the vein of the style of Mario Bava or Dario Argento. The minute Gilderoy arrives at the Italian movie studio (Bereberian Sound Studio) we realize that he's out of his element. His timid nature causes him to be bullied around by the loud, boisterous, passionate Italians he's working alongside, there's clearly some inner turmoil between the cast & crew which he's now in the middle of, someone is trying to sabotage the film and it's also heavily implied that Glideroy has never worked on a low budget horror movie before. This immediately reminded me of the basic plot to Barton Fink - an off-Broadway New York City playwright (John Turturro) is hired to come out to "Hollyweird" to write b-movie screenplays. And the idea of a foreigner going over to another country to work on the post production of a sabotaged European B-movie is part of the basic plot to CQ. And like CQ, Berberian Sound Studio is a film within a film that's also about the making of a film that schools the audience on the little tricks that went on behind the scenes in order make a cheap movie come to life.
Through the course of the film Gilderoy becomes more & more uncomfortable working at Berberian Sound Studio and he starts to sense that the same mysterious force that's trying to sabotage the film hes working on is also out to sabotage him. There's no visible or immediate threat (outside of the Italians who dislike him for no legitimate reason) but you do start to feel that there's something creepy out to get him. ...Or is there?
Berberian Sound Studio is the kind of psychological thriller in the vein of Fear X or The Tenant where the longer you watch the more you start to question if our main character is really in trouble or slowly going insane. This is the part of the story that I thought got wrapped up a little too quickly. In the last 20 minutes Peter Strickland does a Demonlover/Mulholland Drive to the plot and we're given a sudden twist that felt hurried & rushed. This is a very entertaining film but parts of it felt kind of empty. There seemed to be more effort put in to the style and ambiance and less in to the story. I thought the sudden plot twist/split personality angle was unnecessary. Stirckland could have kept things more straightforward/based in reality like Blowout or The Conversation which I found to be a lot more effective in the end. I don't mean to insult Berberian Sound Studio because, again, I did enjoy it overall, but part of it felt like Peter Strickland couldn't come up with a good enough ending so he threw a hail mary and just decided to make things surreal & Lynchian at the last minute.
This makes the Coen Brothers influence even more evident given that's a common thing they love to do when they cant end a film. SNAP!

I was surprised to learn that director Peter Strickland wasn't a music video director prior to becoming a filmmaker given his emphasis on style over plot which is a trait many music video-turned movie directors have (Anton Corbijn, Mark Romenak, Jonathan Glazer, etc). Even David Fincher, Michel Gondry & Spike Jonze (who all got their start making music videos) get caught up in that from time to time. I think if Peter Strickland hooked up with a talented screenwriter he'd find that one key element that's missing.
But with all that being said, I still highly recommend this for anyone who loves old Italian horror films, psychological thrillers or Roman Polanski. Actually, this is a role I could see Roman Polanski playing. Toby Jones' performance, which is really good, did remind me of Polanski in The Tenant in certain parts.
No matter how empty some of the story may be, this is the kind film that's bound to bring up the kind of discussion brought on by films like Mulholland Drive, 3 Women, Black Swan, Persona, The Tenant or any other film that deals with split personalities, pressure, broken dreams, loneliness, being consumed by the art you create or all of the above.

TWO BY FERRARA: NEW ROSE HOTEL & THE FUNERAL

There's a great Abel Ferrara Q&A from the 2011 New York Film Festival on YouTube that I've been listening too for the last couple of months that gives a lot of insight in to his career. Thanks mostly in part to the support of New York City's film community, Abel Ferrara has kinda "resurfaced" over the last couple of years - His last film, 4:44 Last Day On Earth, had a good run, Anthology Film Archives gave a great retrospective on his recent unseen works and his previously unreleased films are a little easier to come by online and on DVD now. But things weren't like that for him for quite some time.

Abel Ferrara feels he was somewhat blackballed in the movie industry sometime around the late 90's. Sometimes filmmakers use that black balled thing as an excuse for bad box office numbers or the inability to get a film financed but Ferrara sorta has a valid point. It’s odd that a filmmaker can go from making Bad Lieutenant (one of the best films & best lead performances of the 90's) to barely being able to getting a small indie film financed. Maybe it was his string of interesting/odd/misunderstood/frustrating post-Bad Lt. works like; Body Snatchers, Dangerous Game & The Addiction that kinda turned producers & financers off. Maybe there were some behind-the-scenes things we don’t know about. Whatever the case may be, Ferrara put out some interesting work in the late 90's that hasn’t really stood the test of time (The Funeral) or has gone virtually unknown (New Rose Hotel) at no fault of his own and in my opinion they should be revisited...

I like New Rose Hotel more than I think I'm supposed to. From the bad reviews to the low ratings on IMDB & Rotten Tomatoes - everything is telling me to hate this movie but I just can’t. There's something about this lost random gem that I really enjoy. Unlike other misunderstood maverick filmmakers who find more fans & support in Europe with their recent questionable work (Melvin Van Peeples, Alex Cox, Monte Hellman, etc) Ferrara actually has good & consistent work that just has a tough time getting distributed sometimes. His work is fun to dissect and write about even when it’s problematic.

New Rose Hotel, adapted from the William Gibson short story of the same name, is a moody, atmospheric, sensual, science fiction tale that falls under the cyberpunk genre (the film was actually given Gibson's blessing). But unlike other classic cyberpunk science fiction films, New Rose Hotel doesn’t have super robots (Robocop), cool laser guns (Bladerunner) or virtual reality (Lawnmower Man). There isn’t even a huge emphasis on computers or getting lost on the Internet which is usually what these kinda stories are about (The Matrix, World On A Wire, Hackers, etc). It’s barely science fiction. In the same vein as Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Abel Ferrara lightly hints at all the futuristic aspects of the world he creates instead of shoving flying cars & robots down our throats. Besides Bladerunner, New Rose Hotel has a much darker tone than the other films in the cyber punk genre. It takes place in darkly lit lounges, night clubs and of course...hotel rooms. These settings make sense as New Rose is just as much a neo-noir as it is a science fiction tale.
Years before this was made, a pre-Hurt Locker/Zero Dark Thirty Kathryn Bigelow was set to direct an adaptation of it before Abel Ferrara but after some creative differences between her and Gibson, she dropped out of the project and went on to make Strange Days - another cyber punk story that has a few similarities to not only New Rose Hotel, but a lot of Gibson's other stories as well...

When I talked to Gibson, I said you want to help? He said if you need me you're in bad shape. She [Bigelow] had him thinking he couldn't write a script, that he was useless. Believe me I don't know how this guy even survived that. She wanted her way. You should read the script he wrote for this if it wasn't called "New Rose Hotel." You wouldn't know what the Hell it was. Then they got rid of him, they didn't want him around anymore. Then they were going to do the version with Schwarzenegger and they put in 300K for this Creative Artists writer out of LA and were gonna write it as an action movie and get Schwarzenegger to play it. - Abel Ferrara (Indiewire)

Immediately after watching this I read Gibson's short and honestly feel that the film honors the original story. Any time you adapt someones work (especially a cultish writer like Gibson) you're always gonna get loyal literature fans complaining about something but Gibson gave this film his blessing which is good enough for me. Unfortunately, I think New Rose Hotel was stuck with the stigma that Johnny Mnemonic left behind a few years earlier (another sci-fi film adapted from a Gibson story that failed at the box office) and people didn’t wanna give it a chance. Additionally, Abel Ferrara isn’t exactly the first filmmaker who comes to mind when you think of science fiction. Maybe people just weren't ready for an Abel Ferrara science fiction movie. He isn’t from the same school as Paul Verhoven, The Wachowski's, David Cronenberg but with New Rose Hotel he didn’t try to be a someone he's not. He brought William Gibson in to HIS world and brought along a few of his regulars (Christopher Waken, Willem Dafoe & Asia Argento)

In the not-too-distant future, the world's two biggest corporations (Maas & Hosaka) are feuding with one another for control over the best patents, cures and other worldly inventions. The brightest mind behind many of these genius developments, a scientist by the name of "Hiroshi", is currently employed by the Maas corporation and Hosaka is looking to steal to him away. This is where "Fox" (Christopher Walken) and his partner "X" (Willem Dafoe) come in to play. Fox & X are "headhunters" whose job is to essentially convince/persuade workers to go from one company to another. If Fox & X can get Hiroshi to come over to the Hosaka corporation they'll be paid $100 Million. To persuade Hiroshi to switch employers, Fox & X hire an Italian prostitute ("Sandii") to seduce him. This is the basic plot. After that it’s a bit difficult to follow. X falls in love with Sandii, Fox becomes fascinated with Hiroshi, there's a huge plague, Fox throws an orgy and a good portion of what we see in the first half of the film is played out again as slightly altered flashbacks towards the end. The dialogue is a bit up its own ass at times (hey, I like this movie very much but its true). Much of the script (especially the lines delivered by Christopher Walken) seems more concerned with sounding smart, existential, cool & scientific instead of making any sense. The basic plot is pretty easy to decipher but you may find yourself questioning if what a lot of Walken & Dafoe are talking about really has anything to do with the film.

Certain themes and the overall style of New Rose Hotel went on to influence Ferrara's later work like Mary (2005) & 4:44 (2011). In New Rose Hotel we see a lot of chaotic editing (which we hadn’t really seen in Ferrara's films up to that point) and the use of mixed media and different types of cameras all in the same film (some of the footage is grainy, reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai's Fallen Angels, while most of the footage looks like a normal movie). This type of filmmaking is all done throughout Mary. Many themes in New Rose Hotel like plagues and the end of the world are the basis for 4:44. Ferrara even tips his hat to Kubrick (the hotel room that Dafoe stays in towards the end of the film looks like the room at the end of 2001). I can see how some of the acting in the film could be a little off putting. Christopher Walken is more quirky & strange than usual to the point where you find yourself laughing more at how he pronounces certain words instead of focusing on the overall performance which can be pretty distracting. The performance and look of Fox is very similar to the character he plays in Donald Cammell's Wild Side. But hey, some people who love Walken's quirkiness may get a kick out of his portrayal of Fox. Asia Argento, who's never been more beautiful, is a little flat & awkward at times (although I've heard some describe her performance in New Rose Hotel as "raw") but you find yourself not really caring too much because of how naturally beautiful she looks. Dafoe's presence is kinda downplayed in my opinion but Ferrara made up for that with Go-Go Tales.

On a more positive note, New Rose Hotel features cameos and quick appearances from the likes of John Lurie, Anabella Sciorra & Victor Argo

Ferrara has an understanding & love for cinema that many directors don’t which is a shame because his reputation among the average person aware of who he is keeps him in that King Of New York/Ms. 45/Bad Lieutenant box when he's got a lot more to give (he’s currently working on a script about the final day of Pier Paolo Passolini). Ever since Bad Lieutenant it seems like he's been trying to stretch himself more as a filmmaker and dip in to different genres like the apocalypse (4:44), science fiction/"the information age" (New Rose Hotel) and hybrid fiction/documentaries (Hotel Chelsea) yet people (mostly Americans) aren't very receptive for some reason. New Rose Hotel has a lot in common with Vinterberg's It’s All About Love. Both films are beautiful chaotic messes that have great casts, cover many issues and are set in an odd disorienting vision of the not-so-distant future.

If you go in to New Rose Hotel expecting Ferrara's regular raw, gritty New York City style of filmmaking found in Bad Lieutenant or Ms. 45 you're setting yourself up to be disappointed. If you have an open mind and are looking to expand your view on him as a filmmaker (which New Rose Hotel will surely do) this may be the film for you.

Now...if you're looking for vintage Abel Ferrara then look no further than his 1996 mob drama; The Funeral...

I'm not very keen on writing about mob movies. Everything has already been written about the great ones by people more qualified than I (Godfather, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, etc) and all the other mob movies out there are just bad, formulaic carbon copies of the great ones that aren't really worthy of being written about (too many to name). That’s the interesting thing about the mob genre - there’s not much middle ground. Mafia films are either classic pieces of art or bad & overrated. There aren’t too many that are just simply "good" or "solid". Abel Ferrara's The Funeral may not be on the same level as The Godfather or Goodfellas but it shouldn't be grouped in with all the other bad & overrated mob films out there. The Funeral is pretty unique. Besides the mafia/organized crime angle it touches on family (blood family, not mafia family) along with communism & socialism. Ferrara inst a novice to the mob/organized crime genre (King Of New York & China Girl) but this is by far his best work within that realm. In my opinion this was his last undeniably good film for quite some time until he re-emerged with Mary (2005) & Go-Go Tales (2007). According to co-star Vincent Gallo, Abel Ferrara spent a good portion of his time on set in his trailer smoking crack instead of directing but I find that a little hard to believe.

This film was pretty much considered a flop in the U.S. (like most post-Bad Lieutenant Ferrara films) when it came out and I honestly don’t get it. Over the years it’s become one of those movies you find in the discount DVD bin section at the video store for $7.99 (that's how I came across it). How is it possible that a film with one of the greatest ensemble casts of the last 20 years (Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Benecio Del Toro, Vincent Gallo, Annabella Sciorra, Isabella Rossellini, the underrated Victor Argo and a quick appearance from David Patrick Kelly) managed to fall in to obscurity? More importantly, in an era when large ensemble casts were pretty much only used for those multi-storyline post-Pulp Fiction style films in American independent cinema, Ferrara didn't fall in to that madness and made ONE cohesive story as opposed to 6 different stories that all connect to each other in the end. The Funeral is different from other mob films as there's minimal violence (when compared to stuff like Goodfellas or King Of New York). Its more about the internal family problems between two brothers: "Ray" (Christopher Walken) & "Chez" (Chris Penn) and how they handle (and ultimately deal with) the death of their youngest (communist) brother "Johnny" (Vincent Gallo) who was gunned down by a rival crime family run by "Gaspare Spoglia" (Benecio Del Toro)...or at least that's what we're supposed to believe.

The Funeral is without a doubt Chris Penn's greatest performance. Take his intensity from the final minutes of Reservoir Dogs and spread it out through an entire movie and you'd kinda get the gist of what I'm talking about. His performance is so draining & heavy it almost gives you a headache watching him act. Most performances concerned with depression (which Chez is surely suffering from) focuses more on the sad & crippling aspect of it while Penn's performance focuses more on the angry & aggressive side of depression. And Chris Penn's large size adds to it, giving the Chez character an intimidating presence. There’s one scene in particular that’s a bit odd & hard to watch where he has his way with a young girl. Say what you want about the cinema of Abel Ferrara, and trust me there's plenty to say both good & bad, but he can get an intense performance out of his actors - Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant, Forest Whitaker in Mary, Willem Dafoe in Go-Go Tales, etc. This was also one of Christopher Walken's later rare good performances along with Catch Me If You Can (a performance he was nominated for that still manages to go unnoticed).

It's tough to take Walken seriously in his more recent work but there's no misguided humor about his performance in The Funeral (especially in the scene when he confronts the man who killed his brother). Ray & Chez are both big tough gangsters but when they confront each other they revert back to being little kids - in a scene towards the beginning Walken leaves the house when Penn arrives and refuses to come back until he leaves (clearly something a child would do). Penn & Walken's grieving in The Funeral makes me miss the brother I never even had. The presence of the female characters (Sciorra, Rossellini & Mol play the "mob wives") may come off as minor at first but in one scene Anabella Sciorra kinda steals the show with a monologue about how sick & fed up she is with the mob way of life and her husband. Unlike classic female performances in gangster films (Diane Keaton in The Godfather or Lorraine Braco in Goodfellas) Sciorra comes off a lot tougher and less neurotic (although still a bit vulnerable & sad).
My only complaint about The Funeral is the lack of Isabella Rossellini. Also, there’s just “something” about The Funeral that was screaming for Michael Madsen’s presence. Given the size of the cast, The Funeral could have easily been a 2-1/2+ hour film if done right but at the same time its fine the way it is. There’s something about a 90-something minute mafia film that’s a breath of a fresh air in a sea of 3+ hour epics.

I find myself kinda sympathizing for some of the characters in The Funeral more than I do in other mob films. There's no celebration of the crimes they commit or the flashy violent lifestyle they live whereas in stuff like Goodfellas we're kinda supposed to think these guys are "cool" (Goodfellas is still one of the most important films of the 90's and there would probably be no Funeral without it). At the end of the day The Funeral could be looked at as a film that shows the realistic & ugly side of mob life and the consequences that come with that lifestyle. The Funeral is more along the lines of Donnie Brasco (specifically Al Pacino's character) or the mob sub plot in Ghost Dog where we see old, broken down, tired gangsters in their 50's & 60's still carrying out hits, taking orders and hanging out in smoke-filled basements (nothing really "cool" about that). This is a quietly depressing & drab film with an ending that takes the phrase(*SPOILER ALERT*): "everyone dies in the end" a little too literal. The lighting is always dark and all the dominant colors in the film are darkish & grey and you genuinely feel bad for Vincent Gallo as he lies on the ground whimpering (literally) and dying from a gunshot to the belly. The Funeral features plenty of "Ferrara-isms" - religious symbolism (specifically Catholicism), the focus on Italian American families, Christopher Walken & Victor Argo and occasional spurts of violence). For reasons ranging from rawness & grittiness to unconventional editing & storytelling, Ferrara can be an acquired taste for some (he’s one of those American filmmakers who’s appreciated more by Europeans than fellow Americans). If you’ve read my write-ups on Mary & Go-Go Tales you’d see that the cinema of Abel Ferrara is quite challenging, but he’s currently one of my favorite filmmakers to write about (along with Terrence Malick & Carlos Reygadas).

The Funeral can be enjoyed by most people (cinephiles to average movie goers who like a gangster film). Some may be a little let down by the final act as well as the discovery of who actually killed Vincent Gallo, but I personally didn't have any problems with it. Ferrara could have taken a more conventional route to ending his film and he didn't.